When left-wing icon Naomi Wolf warned that America was heading towards fascism under George W. Bush, characterized by illegal surveillance, arbitrary detention of suspects, and paramilitary martial law, she was lauded, but when she continued to issue the same warning as a result of Obama’s failure to reverse any of those policies, many on the left abandoned support for her.

Alternet writer Justine Sharrock seems to be struggling to come to terms with the fact that Naomi Wolf’s rhetoric now very much echoes that of Alex Jones and many aspects of the Tea Party movement, an uncomfortable quandary for leftist media outlets, many of whom have acted as obedient echo chambers for the corporate media in demonizing grassroots populists as extremists and even domestic terrorists.

“She speaks their language, referring to the Founding Fathers and American Revolution as models, admitting to a profound sense of fear, warning of tyranny, fascism, Nazism and martial law. When Glenn Beck warns of these things we laugh. When Wolf draws those same connections, we listen. How can both sides be speaking the same language, yet see things so differently?” asks Sharrock.

The reason, as Wolf outlines, is the fact that Obama has preserved, institutionalized, and even expanded the very same policies that led to the left comparing George W. Bush to Hitler, a comparison which now, when made with Obama, is taboo, racist and an example of “fringe beliefs” according to the establishment media.

“Bush legalized torture, but Obama is legalizing impunity. He promised to roll stuff back, but he is institutionalizing these things forever. It is terrifying and the left doesn’t seem to recognize it,” responds Wolf, adding that making comparisons between Obama and historical dictators should not be off limits when he is following similar tyrannical policies.

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“Obama has done things like Hitler did,” states Wolf. “Let me be very careful here. The National Socialists rounded people up and held them without trial, signed legislation that gave torture impunity, and spied on their citizens, just as Obama has. It isn’t a question of what has been done that Hitler did. It’s what does every dictator do, on the left or the right, that is being done here and now. The real fight isn’t left or right but between forces of democracy across the spectrum and the forces of tyranny.”

And that’s what the left-wing needs to understand if true freedom is ever going to be restored in America. As Wolf touches upon in the interview, the left is brilliant at going up against the tyranny of the state, but only when a Republican is in office. As soon as a Democrat gets in, liberals suddenly prostrate themselves in obedience and join the chorus in attacking any dissenters as radical-right wing extremists who should have their speech taken away, blissfully ignorant of the fact that those very same laws will then be used to silence their free speech when the oval office rotates back to a Republican once again.

Leftists are so prone to flip-flopping and becoming statists when a Democrat gets in office because they associate their own ego and political power with politicians, a foolish misjudgment in light of the fact that politicians stopped representing anything other than their own crooked interests decades ago. As Wolf emphasizes, “Frankly, liberals are out of the habit of communicating with anyone outside their own in cohort. We have a cultural problem with self-righteousness and elitism….We look down on people we don’t agree with. It doesn’t serve us well.”

“I was basically saying don’t sit around waiting for the two corrupted established parties to restore the Constitution or the Republic. The founding generation was birthed by the rabble of all walks of life that got fed up and did risky things because they were captivated by the breath of liberty. There is a looming oligarchy and it is up to the people to organize a grassroots movement and push back,” states Wolf, outlining why she shares many of the same principles embraced by the Tea Party, while warning that huge chunks of the movement have obviously been hijacked by Republican operatives.

Wolf, who admits that her “cultural heritage is FDR and Medicare and federal government solutions,” now expresses her support for the logic behind the states’ rights movement, a grassroots project mainly driven by libertarians and Ron Paul supporters.

“If you think through the analysis, strengthening state rights is a good corrective of the aggregation of an over-reaching federal power. Take California’s challenge of the Patriot Act or states like Vermont leading the way with addressing the corruption of the voting system. It’s a good example of the Tea Party thinking out of the box on how to address a problem,” states Wolf.

The interview ends with Wolf warning of the fact that concerns about martial law are now more prescient than ever.

“I think we have gone very far down that road. I met Muslim immigrants in Brooklyn who were swept up in 9-11 raids, held in abusive conditions, beaten, denied rights. That’s how things started in Germany. Guantanamo was modeled after what Stalin developed for the Gulag. Why are we engaged in psychological denial that it’s not a concentration camp? In terms of martial law, my god. Since the book came out they deployed a brigade in the U.S. and suspended the Posse Comitatus Act. There is no question that it’s something to take seriously. People have a histrionic view of what martial law will look like.”